Maekaeda Gibbons Esston Benjamin was working as a loan officer at Bank of America, assessing customers’ financial positions, when she began mixing fragrance formulas at home in 2018. Unable to justify the cost of high-end perfumes over the long term, she initially made the products to reduce her own spending and share them with colleagues and friends. As coworkers began asking to buy them, the side project developed into a business.
Gibbons invested about $300 to get started. Roughly $54 went toward bottles purchased on Amazon, with the remainder used for carrier oils and formula testing. Seven years later, her company, Brown Sugar Babe, has generated $21 million in gross revenue and operates a flagship store in Atlanta. Digital sales dashboards and financial records show that the company has not taken on outside investors.
Growth Without Outside Capital
Brown Sugar Babe sells body oils, scrubs, body butters and skincare products. The brand has largely expanded through internally generated funds. Gibbons says that approach has kept the company lean, but it also means some ideas must wait until the business has enough cash to fund them, making growth closely tied to cash flow.
She describes the process as making decisions “by feel”: first using social-media communities to gauge what customers want, then finding the money for ingredients, packaging and production. At times, she has maxed out credit cards to purchase materials needed to complete a product launch. For a consumer brand without venture capital or other external backing, that strategy links customer demand, inventory levels and liquidity management directly.
During one inventory build, Brown Sugar Babe needed roughly two years’ worth of stock and raw materials. Gibbons made multiple purchases over about three months, spending approximately $5.5 million in total. She considered financing the order but ultimately chose to pay for it in stages, saying she wanted to preserve the company’s “safety net.” The purchases created significant pressure at first, but securing two years of materials allowed her to focus more on production and sales execution while reducing the risk that supply-chain disruptions would affect product availability.
Why the Brand Is Staying With Fragrance Oils
Although Gibbons continues to test new formulas, Brown Sugar Babe does not currently plan to enter the market for alcohol-based eau de parfum, or EDP, and spray fragrances. The brand is concentrating on fragrance oils, a category Gibbons believes still has room that other companies have not fully developed. She also says the alcohol-based fragrance market already includes many established brands, giving Brown Sugar Babe little reason to enter a more crowded segment.
Many of the brand’s products feature elements associated with established luxury fragrances. Gibbons does not like describing them simply as “dupes.” She says she does not begin with a particular luxury perfume and try to reproduce it item by item. Instead, she starts with a scent she likes and explores how to make it more noticeable and suitable for a body-care product.
That product strategy also exists alongside intellectual-property disputes in the fragrance industry. In 2024, Sol de Janeiro sued MCoBeauty, alleging false advertising, trade-dress infringement and unfair competition. The complaint said MCoBeauty’s fragrance mist imitated aspects of the Cheirosa body-mist line, including its scent profile, packaging and brand presentation. MCoBeauty filed a motion to dismiss in January 2026, arguing that the case was effectively an attempt to block lawful competition. The matter remains before a federal court.
Gibbons says consumers’ views of similar products often depend on the brand and how the product is presented. She has also encountered other brands copying Brown Sugar Babe formulas, but does not believe that borrowing inspiration from existing products should automatically be excluded. In her view, different brands can draw ideas from products already on the market.
A $1.2 Million Atlanta Flagship
Many fragrance companies sell exclusively online to avoid the fixed costs associated with leases, build-outs and store employees. Gibbons decided digital channels alone could not provide the face-to-face connection she wanted to build, and after operating for several years, she opened Brown Sugar Babe’s Atlanta flagship in 2025.
The store required about $1.2 million in total investment, including construction, brand design and launch events. In addition to regular retail operations, the company holds in-store and other offline events and pop-ups intended to offer experiences that online shopping cannot provide. Gibbons acknowledges that she sometimes wants to organize more activities for the community, but the more elaborate the in-person experience, the greater the cost and execution burden.
Demand forecasting remains another operating variable. Brown Sugar Babe has sold out multiple times after launching new products, and its website has experienced outages caused by unusually high traffic. Gibbons says that even after repeated sales that exceeded expectations, she still underestimates customers’ willingness to buy when a new product goes live. For a brand that began with about $300 and grew through retained cash, balancing sudden order increases against the risk of excess inventory remains one of its most immediate day-to-day financial challenges.